And now it turns out that the sexual afterglow it can give you actually lasts for 48 hours.

According to a new study, the feeling of sexual satisfaction can stay with us for up to two days after having sex with our partners.

Researchers looked at two different sets of data from two groups of newlyweds (214 couples in all) who were asked to have sex over a two week period…and then asked again six months later.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Every night, they were asked to write whether they’d had sex with their partner that day and how satisfied they were with their sex life – and relationship as a whole – that day, regardless of whether they’d banged or not.

Typically, participants had sex on four out of the 14 days being studied.

Unsurprisingly, the days that they had sex on were also the days on which feelings of high sexual satisfaction were recorded. But couples also reported feeling satisfied two days later.

In other words, the afterglow lasted for 48 hours after that one instance of sex.

‘Our research shows that sexual satisfaction remains elevated 48 hours after sex,’ said lead author of the study, Andrea Meltzer.

(Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

However, the effects tailed off after three days.

That, the study suggested, might be down to the fact that it takes three days for a man’s sperm count to recover, while two days is the maximum amount of time sperm can survive inside a woman’s reproductive tract.

As you’d expect, a high sexual satisfaction also seems to correlate to a higher relationship satisfaction.

‘People with a stronger sexual afterglow – that is, people who report a higher level of sexual satisfaction 48 hours after sex – report high levels of relationship satisfaction several months later.’

It’s worth pointing out that the sample was pretty specific, so it’s unknown whether you’d get the two-day high from shagging a stranger after a night out as you would from having sex with your new life partner. But it’s interesting nonetheless.